Thursday, February 28, 2008

BD Sex workers protest to get back their brothel

Sex workers evicted from their brothel in western Bangladesh flooded the streets of the capital Dhaka Monday seeking compensated.Carrying their children and placards reading “Rehabilitate us or give back our house,” 50 prostitutes marched peacefully by the women and children affairs ministry in Dhaka’s busy Maghbazar area. A brothel in the western town of Magura was home to 400 women and 50 of their children until it was closed down by local officials in December. The sex workers say they have since been living on the street or in parks around Bangladesh.“We staged this demonstration today after failing to get any help from authorities,” Momtaz Begum, president of the Sex Workers’ Network of Bangladesh, told AFP.“We petitioned the prime minister (Khaleda Zia) and her office assured us in January it would look into the matter,” Begum said. “We are still waiting.” She charged the sex workers were evicted even though they were operating legally and paid taxes on the brothel property.Local officials in Magura, 104 kilometers (65 miles) west of Dhaka, could not be reached for comment. Prostitution is largely tolerated in Bangladesh, which has at least 18 brothels with some 2,500 registered sex workers, according to the Bangladesh National Women Lawyers’ Association.But authorities have in the last three decades sought to crack down on the world’s oldest profession, pushing much of the sex industry underground.Experts fear the growth of “floating prostitution” centering around hotels will lead to more unsafe sex and sexually transmitted diseases in Bangladesh, which has been relatively spared from the AIDS scourge.Government figures released this year show 248 people in Bangladesh are infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, and 20 people have died from disease.UN estimates put the number of HIV patients at about 13,000 — still far below neighbouring India, where at least 3.97 million people have HIV, more than any country other than South Africa. —AFP